What is your favourite quote / para from a book you have read?
This is for all the book lovers here. What is your favourite line/quote/paragraph from any book you have read. Can be fiction/non-fiction.
Tagging@AzadHindFauz @Villanelle others!
BD,
"Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth." –Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
This is my second shameless plug for my favourite fiction book. :)
“We
are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going
to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could
have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day
outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include
greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because
the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of
actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our
ordinariness, that are here.”
Originally written by Richard Dawkins. But I came across this para in the 'Sense of Style' by Steven Pinker.
.
"To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation".
- Yann Martel, 'life of Pi'
"You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better. We see that in sports all the time, don’t we? The tennis challenger starts strong but soon loses confidence in his playing. The champion racks up the games. But in the final set, when the challenger has nothing left to lose, he becomes relaxed again, insouciant, daring. Suddenly he’s playing like the devil and the champion must work hard to get those last points. So it was with me. To cope with a hyena seemed remotely possible, but I was so obviously outmatched by Richard Parker that it wasn’t even worth worrying about. With a tiger aboard, my life was over.
- Yann Martel, 'life of Pi'
''My dad gave me advice on how to negotiate my way through life. 'Never make a decision until you have to.’
He'd also warn me that even if I was in a position of strength, whether at work or in relationships, I had to play fair.
'Just because you're in the driver's seat, doesn't mean you have to run people over,' he'd say."
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
― Kafka on the Shore"My Harvard Twenty-fifth Reunion is next month and I am scared to death.
Scared to face all my successful classmates, walking back on paths of glory, while I have nothing to show for my life except a few gray hairs.
Today a heavy, red-bound book arrived that chronicles all the achievements of The Class of ’58. It really brought home my own sense of failure.
I stayed up half the night just staring at the faces of the guys who once were undergraduates with me, and now are senators and governors, world-famous scientists and pioneering doctors.
Who knows which of them will end up on a podium in Stockholm?
Or the White House lawn?
And what’s amazing is that some are still married to their first wives.
A few of the most glittering successes were close friends of mine.
The roommate I once thought of as a fruitcake is the candidate likeliest to be our next Secretary of State. The future President of Harvard is a guy I used to lend my clothes to.
Another, whom we barely noticed, has become the musical sensation of our age. The bravest of them all laid down his life for something he believed in.
His heroism humbles me.
And I return, resplendent in my disappointment. I am the last Eliot of a great line to enter Harvard. My ancestors were all distinguished men.
In war, in peace, in church, in science, and in education. As recently as 1948, my cousin Tom received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
But the brilliance of the family tradition has grown dim with me. I don’t even hold a candle to Jared Eliot (Class of 1703), the man who introduced rhubarb to America. Yet I do have one tenuous connection with my noble forebears.
They were diarists.
My namesake, Reverend Andrew Eliot, ’37, while bravely tending his parishioners, kept a daily record –still extant –describing what the Revolutionary War was like during the siege of Boston in 1776.
The moment the city was liberated, he hurried to a meeting of the Harvard Board of Overseers to move that General George Washington be given an honorary doctorate.
His son inherited his pulpit and his pen, leaving a vivid account of America’s first days as a republic.
Naturally, there’s no comparison, but I’ve been keeping notebooks all my life as well.
Maybe that’s the single remnant of my heritage.
I’ve observed history around me, even if I didn’t make any of it.
Meanwhile, I’m still scared as hell."
@nerdfighter John Green is a role model :)
Kind of things he does , you want to grow up and do that. Such a talent!
I really like this wonderful & deeply moving excerpt that I read from one of the many letters that Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote to his wife Alys :
// it becomes increasingly difficult to regain your balance once you allow it to be lost. That is where the danger lies. The temptation to give up when the waves surge & the storm looks black and unending & the body is numb and cold & to hold out is a torture. But one has to hold out, not only for one's own safety but also for the sake of everything else one holds sacred & precious & dear. So do not stint in your tears, my love but keep your chin up because the storm will pass someday & the clouds will lift, the sun will shine, may be not tomorrow, may be much later but surely it will.
Chashm-e-nam, jaan-e-shoreeda kaafi nahin
Tohmat-e-ishq-e-posheeda baqi nahin
Aaj baazar mein paa-ba-jaulan chalo
Dast-e-afshaan chalo, mast-o-raqsaan chalo
Khaak-bar-sar chalo, khoon-ba-damaan chalo
Raah takta hai sab shahr-e-janaan chalo
Aaj baazar mein paa-ba-jaulan chalo
Haakim-e-shahar bhi, majma-e-aam bhi
Teer-e-ilzaam bhi, sang-e-dushnaam bhi
Subh-e-nashaad bhi, roz-e-nakaam bhi
Aaj baazar mein paa-ba-jaulan chalo
In ka damsaaz apne siwa kaun hai
Shahr-e-jaanan mein ab ba-safa kaun hai
Dast-e-qaatil ke shaayan raha kaun hai
Rakht-e-dil baandh lo, dil figaaro chalo
Phir hamin qatl ho aayen yaaro chalo //
chamomile,whatonly
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